


Baby on Board

by cells55



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cells55/pseuds/cells55
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fic for evmlove who gave me this prompt: Established Dandy - future fic - Mindy goes into labour on an airplane.<br/>Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby on Board

"I still don't think we should've flown." Danny was grumbling at 30,000 feet. He twisted a can of tonic water round and round in his hands; as soon as he opened it, the thing was going to spray the whole of coach. 

"You've made your thoughts quite clear," Mindy replied calmly. "All the way to Florida, in fact. Are we going to go through this all the way back, too?"

"The altitude, the cabin pressure - a woman in your condition - "

"You know I don't like it when you call it a 'condition'," she interrupted. "And we're both doctors. We know it's fine."

"A car would've been fine, too."

"A car, all the way to your brother's wedding and back?" she raised her eyebrows at him. "We would've killed each other before we'd made it out of New York." She paused, reassessed: "The city, not the state."

"That's an exaggeration and you know it," he muttered. "Why Richie couldn't have had the wedding in Staten like ma wanted, I do not know..."

"Okay, weirdo, you know very well why not," Mindy sighed. "Just relax, okay? We're only about an hour out of LaGuardia. Then you can take me home and put me back in the bubble you so love."

He turned in his seat to meet her gaze, his face a picture of earnestness; it was adorable, if not a little irritating, too. "It's not the bubble I love, Min. It's you," his hand rested on top of her large bump. 37 weeks pregnant and she felt like an elephant was sitting on her bladder. "You and the baby. I just want you to be safe. Is that so terrible?"

"No," she allowed. "The way it presents itself is terrible, but the feeling behind it is not."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Well, that's...kind of you to say."

"You're welcome." She gave him a sunny smile. "Feel like going to get me an OJ? Your kid wants vitamins."

She barely needed to ask; he was already out of his seat. Earlier on in the pregnancy, she had decided to test just how far he would go with a series of increasingly outlandish requests. He hadn't even balked at 'fresh goat's milk and souvenir candy from Niagara Falls'. Eventually, she gave up, because he was far too devoted to her, and she was starting to get real cravings that trumped her fake cravings. But at least she had some fun for a few weeks.

Her waters broke, betrayal of the worst kind, within a minute of Danny leaving his seat. She looked down at herself clinically; she'd been having some aches and pains for about 48 hours anyway, which she had chosen to ignore for the sake of denial and enjoying a fabulous gay wedding attended by dozens of handsome men. Those aches and pains kinda made sense now, though. She considered her options, before pressing the 'call' button on the armrest.

Jon, airsteward and professional misery, arrived a few moments later. "Yes?" he sighed heavily.

"Hello again, Jonathan," Mindy smiled pleasantly. "I swear to God this is a real thing this time. I'm not buzzing because of the choices of in-flight movie."

He gave her a dead-eyed stare. "I promise you, ma'am, I have no input on the movies available - "

"Okay, 'ma'am'? No, I am not that old," she interjected. "Actually, though, I am pretty sure I'm in labour."

Something came to life, then. "Wait...really?"

She nodded placidly. "My water just broke all over your lovely seat. And judging by how I've been feeling, I think I've been having low-level contractions for 2 days."

"What?!"

Oh, crap. She turned her gaze to find her husband, who had just dropped a small plastic beaker of orange juice down the front of his jeans. At least they matched now. "Hey, Danny. I was just letting our steward know that I'm in labour."

Danny looked from Mindy, to Jon, and back again. "You've been having contractions for two days and you didn't say anything?"

"I was distracted! You know I love weddings."

He ran his hand wearily over his face. "Oh, god. Oh, god, oh, god - "

"Okay, my husband is freaking out," she addressed Jon now. "He's an OB, so he could deliver the baby, but not if he's freaking out, and quite frankly I'm not sure I'm happy about him getting all up in my business down there - not that's he's not familiar, of course, but it's a different context, you know?"

Jon looked far, far out of his depth. "Um. Yes."

"So, plan of action," she carefully stood up, flinching with a new pain that shot across her abdomen. "Clear a little space for me in the galley; find the medical kit; do a little announcement asking if there are any doctors onboard. Okay?"

"Okay," Jon nodded quickly, and disappeared.

Everyone around them was watching now as she stepped into the aisle. "Danny? Sweetie? I need you to focus."

His eyes were wide, his body almost twitching as he tried his very best not to dissolve into hysterics completely. "I'm focused. I'm completely focused."

"Good," she smiled. "Take me back to the galley - and not for any funny business, ha ha ha..."

His expression told her he was not in the mood for comedy. Which was a shame, because she felt like this was a situation ripe with opportunities. "Min - "

"Look, if you're going to scold me for not realising I've been in labour for the past two days, now is really not the time," she told him, taking his hand. "Save it for sometime in the future, when you need to win an argument."

He nodded, and led the way back up the aisle towards the galley; she made it to the curtains before she had to stop, leaning heavily against the partition wall. "Holy shit, they do not kid around about contractions," she huffed through the pain. 

"You're doing great, sweetheart," his voice was more soothing, less strained now; perhaps he finally had a handle on his panic. "Here we go..."

He helped her down to the floor, where Jon and a few other stewards had assembled some pillows and blankets to form a makeshift bed. A blonde woman appeared, rolling up her sleeves.

"Hi, I'm Ellen Vale, I'm an ER doctor," she introduced herself. "And it looks like I'll be delivering your baby."

"An ER doctor? Where?" Danny asked, gripping Mindy's hand.

"Don't interrogate the woman, Daniel," Mindy chided him. "Just do what you're told."

"Sorry."

"No problem," Ellen smiled calmly. "Let's see what we're dealing with, shall we?"

With the stewards acting as a screen with the assistance of blankets, Ellen started doing her thing; Mindy really couldn't care less what the woman was doing. The contractions were coming quicker now, and it was a lot less fun without the soothing calm of drugs that she had planned to have for the occasion. 

"Okay, so you're about nine centimetres dilated - "

"Nine?!" Danny was twitching again. "Mindy, what the hell? Are you trying to kill me?"

"Shut up, Castellano," she groaned. "I wasn't going round measuring my own cervix, was I?"

"Let's not panic, okay, dad?" Ellen told Danny calmly. "Your baby's nearly here. Why don't we all just take a deep breath?"

The look on Danny's face at this suggestion was enough to make Mindy giggle - only cut off by another contraction. "Oh, Jesus fuck ow fuck get this thing out of me..."

And that's pretty much what Ellen did. Mindy wasn't sure how long it all took - once she was starting to push, she was so overwhelmed with pain and hormones and the sound of someone blithely going about their flight watching freakin' Twilight in a nearby seat that she had little to no concept of time or place or reality at all. All she knew was they managed to reach a point where it stopped hurting so exquisitely, and Danny's face had gone pale and his eyes wide, and he was reaching for a little bundle of screaming, slimy energy wrapped up in JetBlue blankets, and he was crying, and so was she, and apparently they had brought a little girl into the world, all whilst earning themselves a hefty chunk of air miles.

"We need a name," she murmured sleepily as they were wheeled, high priority, through security at LaGuardia.

Danny hadn't let go of her hand, but his gaze was still fixed on the dozing baby in his arms. "I guess we do."

"How about Jet?"

He seemed to hold back his instinctive response. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that."


End file.
